Dr. Julia Connors has a busy, successful cataract clinic and wants to expand to meet demand. She is considering two alternatives: keeping her physical facility as it is and extending office hours, or renting additional space within her current building. The first appears to be less disruptive to operations but risks alienating her workforce. The second is more disruptive to current operations during construction and will require more capital investment. This case is designed to be taught in a single class session with students who have practiced process analysis.
Organizations without the means to improve rarely can keep up with competition. Improvement requires a deep understanding of underlying operating processes and an ability to assess their performance. The essence of process analysis is the ability to answer the questions, "How is this process doing?" and "How can it do better?" In this Reading, readers observe an operating process and consider the data that needs to be collected so that they are able to answer these key questions. How can a process be described as "doing" well? The answer depends on what the customer promise is and how the firm seeks to create and capture value for its stakeholders. Is the company focus on speed, quality of service, and customer satisfaction? Its measures of success would be very different from another business running a high-volume, capital-intensive factory with a customer promise of low cost, focusing on capital utilization, high volumes, and specific measures of efficiency and productivity. The Reading begins with an overview of the steps in analyzing a process, beginning with process flow diagrams, represent the sequence of tasks and flow of product and information. Concepts introduced in the reading include batch processes, bottleneck analysis and cycle times, and calculating capacity and labor utilization. A variety of numerical analyses are introduced to measure process performance with a focus on 3 critical dimensions: capacity, efficiency, and effectiveness.
This Reading expands on the basic concepts of Process Analysis. It begins with explanations of generic types of processes: the job shop, the worker-paced line, cellular manufacturing, the machine-pace assembly link, and the continuous flow process. Each process type has different characteristics and key management challenges associated with it. The Reading continues with an introduction to the impact of variability (in this case, in processing times) on process performance. The final section covers process improvement with a focus on quality and learning.
It is often assumed that a quality inspection for a product or service comes at the end of a process. For example, an article of clothing may include a sticker that reads "Inspected by #12." Total Quality Management places greater emphasis on monitoring individual steps within an entire production process to ensure that the process is running the way it was intended. Paying close attention to the underlying processes connected to a product or service can greatly benefit companies and the customers they serve. This Reading introduces key concepts and considerations in applying process control beginning with product inspection. It provides an overview of the most commonly used statistical and analytical tools called Statistical Process Control (SPC). SPC is applicable to all processes in manufacturing and services whenever there is a measurable output that must deliver a high-quality product or customer experience.
A set of exercises and instructions to be used with the Process Simulator software made by Pro Model. These exercises allow students to investigate the impact of variable processing times on the performance of simple in-line processes. Includes color exhibits.
A printer and paper converter produces customized packaging used by industrial customers to deliver promotional materials, software, luxury beverages, and gift food and candy. The company specializes in creating innovative packaging solutions for its customers and providing full service from design through final delivery. Even though revenue has tripled, performance has been declining and the firm posted its first loss in over 10 years. The new VP of Operations has been hired to address operational problems resulting in cost overruns, quality problems, and late deliveries. He tours key departments including quality control and sales and visits the various work centers in the plant as he investigates the challenges in the current production process. This case can be used in a first-year MBA-level course in Operations Management. Students are asked to create a process flow diagram and perform break-even, capacity, utilization, and yield analyses before making their final recommendations for improving the firm's performance.
Delwarca Software provides business software to large corporate clients around the world. The firm serves customers who prefer to assemble corporate solutions using a combination of software programs from various suppliers rather than implementing a single enterprise resource planning system. Consequently, Delwarca must provide telephone support services for complex software-hardware interaction and performance problems in addition to the typical software support issues around software installation and upgrades, malware attacks, and processing failures. The manager of the remote support unit implemented a new triage program for customer calls hoping to reduce customer wait time, improve customer satisfaction, and reduce costs. After one year, customer dissatisfaction is at an all-time high and he must perform a quantitative analysis of the current process, considering wait times for customers as well as cost per call, before making a final recommendation. This case can be used in a first-year MBA course in Service Management or Operations Management or a course in industrial engineering. It can also be used to introduce simple queuing theory.
This case follows Toyota's remarkable growth and geographic expansion from 1990 to 2010 and, in the recalls of 2009 and 2010, poses questions about the impact of that growth. Issues of increasing technological complexity also play a part.
IFP, Ltd. is a Europe-based multinational mining and minerals company contemplating an investment to produce forest products in Indonesia. The primary case decisions are 1) how to assess political and operating risk, 2) how to integrate economic and political risk analysis in order to select among the alternative spatial and operating configurations, and 3) how to manage operations in order to minimize risk. This case is an effective vehicle for discussing the complex issues involved in operating in the difficult, uncertain political environment of a developing country.
DR Corporation is a manufacturer of major appliances. The Traffic Manager is facing a decision of selecting a carrier for the inbound movement of motors. The primary case decisions are 1) what factors are critical to the decision, 2) how to calculate the tradeoffs among transportation costs, inventory costs, and order costs, and 3) how the company's managers should coordinate to make the decision. Acts as a very effective introduction to total supply chain cost calculations, and problems of internal coordination for supply chain decision making. Coupled with ChemBright, DR Corporation is a particularly effective way to introduce Supply Chain Management.
Reading Rehab Hospital has experimented with a popular concept in health care--patient-focused care--intended to increase quality and reduce costs by organizing care delivery around particular diagnoses or "service lines," rather than around the functions or disciplines of the care providers. It is equivalent to a product rather than a process focus. Unfortunately, it is not clear whether the benefits of this new healthcare model are sufficient to compensate for the drawbacks.
Considers decisions facing the leader of a manufacturing staff project team assigned to a plant where yields have deteriorated sharply. The process is complex: the plant organization is not cooperative, and there are deep disagreements about what is wrong and how to fix it. Provides an opportunity to analyze yields and productivity, as well as the organizational and personal challenges inherent in line-staff interaction.
eShip is a small Israeli start-up with a potentially exciting new concept for the residential package-delivery value chain--the Automatic Delivery Machine (ADM). Much like today's ubiquitous ATMs, ADMs would allow consumers to have parcels delivered to a nearby ADM rather than to their residences. When a package is delivered, the consumer would be contacted, given a PIN, and could retrieve the package anytime, day or night. Currently, carriers (FedEx, UPS, and the U.S. Postal Service) bear huge costs for local deliveries (the so-called last-mile cost), perhaps as much as $6 billion annually. Most of this cost would disappear if packages could be delivered to ADMs rather than to residences. At the core of eShip's concept is a sophisticated information system that links all the ADMs over the Internet. This case focuses on eShip's attempt to formulate a business model to facilitate entering the U.S. market. The dilemma centers on the role that eShip should play in the value chain and with whom it should partner. Although the ADM concept potentially creates huge value, capturing some of that value is a daunting challenge, particularly in the face of the size and power of U.S. carriers.